Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Coke C2 has apparently made it to stores, or at least to Carbwire. For those who’ve yet to hear anything about it, it is Coke’s answer to the low-carb craze of 2004. Lets ignore the fact that diet sodas have zero carbs, Coke thought it would be a good marketing move to create a new soda specifically marketed at low-carbers. So instead of the zero carbs per bottle, you now have 24g per 16oz bottle. For most Atkinites or even more moderate plans such as South Beach or Protein Power, this would constitute all or most of your daily regimen of carbs. What a brilliant idea! Waste all your carbs on high-fructose corn syrup instead of fibrous veggies and fruits and thus become a walking stereotype of the supposed lack of nutrition of a low-carb diet. Aside from the harmful HFCS, C2 still contains all the phosphorus and carbonation, both of which could potentially promote bone loss, and lets not forget all the wonderful artificial preservatives and flavoring.

Some people have shunned diet soda because of the artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet (Aspartame) whose safety has been questioned. A newer sweetener, Splenda (or Sucralose) shows to be a little more promising, but really there haven’t been enough studies to make it really clear that it is absolutely safe to consume it on a daily basis. But at least some companies, like the makers of Snapple and Diet Rite, have adopted Splenda over Nutrasweet. Still, as much as I like carbonation, that could be just as much of an issue over the long run.

The thing to do, of course, is to wean one’s self off of sweetness in general. Just as with most things, when you don’t eat something as often, or in as concentrated amounts, you tend to get more and more sensitive to the taste and to taste in general. After I stopped putting artificial sweeteners in my coffee (and almost everything else that was “supposed to be” sweet, I started tasting the natural sweetness in foods. You wouldn’t believe how sweet almonds can taste, for example, when you don’t consume sugar or artificial sweeteners on a regular basis. But of course this isn’t easy to do. Lots of stuff tastes pretty sour or bitter without sugar or artificial sweetener added to it, you just have to trust that this will fade eventually and taste buds CAN be retrained. A lot of people won’t have the patience for this and won’t except eating something that tastes bad even for one sitting, but all I can say is that if you can manage to suffer through a few weeks of not getting that sweet-fix, you will be able to get it continuously after that without any added sugar or artificial sweetener…

Coke is just trying to jump on the bandwagon of low-carb without offering a truly low-carb product, and with the additional caveat of offering a product which has pleanty of other potential harmful components other than the sugar. Even if you don’t try my “shock therapy” idea of sharpening your sweet-tooth, you still may find one thing without sugar to be pretty sweet. I find it very sweet. It’s a type of herbal tea called Good Earth. It’s the “original flavor” that has the spices that make it taste sweet. I steep it for a pretty long time, maybe 20 minutes or even longer, then drink it hot or put it in the fridge and make it iced tea. To me, anyway, it simply tastes like it has lots of sugar in it, but at least according to the carton it’s just regular unsweetened herbal tea.